


the first church of the end of the world

by withbloodstainedclothingon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Bisexual Castiel, Bisexual Dean, Cannibalism, Canon Het Relationship, Cults, Dom/sub Undertones, Drug Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, God Complex, M/M, Mild S&M, Misogyny, Rape/Non-con Elements, Relationship Discussions, Rough Sex, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:13:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4007173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withbloodstainedclothingon/pseuds/withbloodstainedclothingon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The angels don’t eat the brain. Only Croats do that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the first church of the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> please read the tags for any potential triggers

There’s a dance that night. Dean didn’t organize it, but Cas is second in command and he believes dances will bring up group morale, so he had his angels stick their kids in a cabin and light a big bonfire to dance around. Everybody’ll be there, except for Dean, who volunteered for wall watch, and Lisa, who watches the kids. The rest of the campers will all come to see Cas’ angels dance, because they’re beautiful, if not in the way the real angels were. Dean thinks that the real way Cas could bring about a boost in morale is to tell his angels to go out and fuck somebody besides him.

There’re footsteps behind him, and he knows who it is by the footfalls, but he still draws his gun just in case. He needn’t have bothered. It’s Benny, big and gruff and friendly, with his fantastic food and his impossible immunity to the Croatoan virus. He smiles his big friendly smile down the barrel of Dean’s gun and pats him on the shoulder with one hamish hand. “Castiel said it’s time to relieve you of your duties.”

Dean scoffs. The gun stays aimed. “Tell Cas exactly where he can shove it.”

Benny’s smile doesn’t waver. “He guessed you’d say that.”

Dean cocks his head like a challenge. “And what’d he tell you to say?”

His smile remains. To Dean, it feels condescending; like Benny pities him for thinking he still has an ounce of control in this camp. Benny’s smile widens, and he holds up his hands in a mocking surrender. “That if you don’t get your ass off duty I’m to sling you over my shoulder like the sack of potatoes you are and drag you back, guards be damned.”

Dean edges closer. “Once again, tell him where he can shove it.”

Benny steps closer on his big bear feet and grabs Dean by the shoulders, lifting him an inch or two off the ground. Dean kicks him in the shin, but he doesn’t flinch. Dean groans. “I’m going, I’m going!”

Benny sets him down with another pat, and Dean hands off his torch and is on his way. Something cracks behind him, like a twig or a bone, but he’s too pissed to go check on it.

***** 

When he gets to the camp, it’s chaos. There’s a girl sprawled on the ground, moaning as another girl licks tequila off her bared stomach. They’re both angels, judging by the wing tattoos on the tequila-licking girl’s back. Men surround them in a semicircle, whooping and hollering. Castiel, backlit by the flames, is watching, the girls writhing at his feet. The tequila-licking angel blows a raspberry on the other’s stomach, and she giggles, squirming her hitched-up shirt even higher.

One of the men turns away from the spectacle for a brief moment, Dean doesn’t know how, to pass Cas a joint. Cas smiles and lights up, pulling his lighter from his pocket and flicking it on. Dean resents that gesture more than he resents the dances, more than he even resents the Croats. It’s human, too human.

Their eyes lock over the heads of the cheering crowd, and Cas pulls the blunt out of his mouth with a manic grin. One bare foot in front of the other, like a dancer or someone not drunk and high on god-knows-what, he starts to walk, and the crowd parts for him, the rowdy men no less rowdy, merely slipping out of the way.

Cas steps over the angels like he doesn’t even see them, his strange eyes still on Dean until they’re only a foot apart. Cas jams the blunt back in his mouth. “Hello, fearless leader. I see you’ve decided to come to my morale-booster.”

He throws his arms up, smirking, and Dean refuses to look at him. “Welcome! To the world’s first dance, post-post apocalypse!”

He laughs like he’s not standing on the corpses of billions, and Dean glowers. “It won’t even be a goddamn dance in twenty minutes, it’ll be a fucking orgy.”

Cas raises a finger mockingly. “Ah, but you are wrong on two points, my friend. Firstly, God cannot damn anything, seeing as he’s dead.”

Dean resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Thank you, Nietzsche.”

Cas continues, pointedly ignoring Dean. “And secondly, your tone of voice implies that an orgy would be a terrible thing, rather than the boost of morale we need.”

“Fuck you.”

Cas takes another hit from the blunt and throws it on the ground, crushing it underfoot as he closes the space between himself and Dean. He hooks two fingers through Dean’s belt loops and pulls, bringing them pelvis-to-pelvis. He breathes his booze-filled breath straight into Dean’s face in a gentle sort of sigh, letting the smoke waft out in tendrils.

Dean coughs, jerking backwards, but Castiel’s hands hold him in place by the hips. He twists his head away, desperate to get out of the cloud of smoke. “What the fuck? What the ever-loving fuck are you even fucking doing?”

He finally breaks Castiel’s hold on him and steps back a few paces, glowering. Cas just smiles. He never does anything else, just smiles and matches Dean step for step until they’re locked back together, Dean leaning back and Cas leaning forward, pressing his forehead to Dean’s until Cas’ face starts to blur out. Cas smiles, and it’s strange, to see someone smile that close up. “I just thought you needed to relax.”

Dean tries, frantically, to back up, but Cas holds him in place. “Well I don’t, ‘cause evidently I’m the only one who takes the zombie apocalypse seriously. If I relax, nobody’ll do shit.”

Cas takes Dean by the hand and drags him towards the fire. Dean tries to wrench his hand from the viselike grip, but Cas must still have some of his grace yet, because his hand remains clasped firmly around Dean’s. He meets his eyes again, and parts his chapped lips and says those five words, those five unforgivable words. “It’s what Sam would want.”

Dean rips his hand from Cas’ grip and punches him in the face. A year ago Castiel would’ve taken it unflinchingly, feeling no more than mere annoyance. Now, though, he lurches back, that mad, nauseating grin still plastered on his bruising face. Dean wants to beat that grin off of him, wants to ask him what right he has to say Sam’s name, but he doesn’t. He just yells profanities and storms off towards the woods. Cas sits on the ground, satisfied.

*****

In order to get to his cabin, Dean has to walk by the graves. The first ones who died are buried there, the old and infirm and pacifists, the parentless children too. Now, only the strongest are left, or those they protect. They’re all marked with bricks, painted by their families, if they had them, except for two crosses in the middle. Now, nobody visits the graves, except for Dean and the Croats, when they break in. There’s nobody new buried here anyway. Castiel’s angels take care of the turned now, and the remains are buried in the woods.

Dean takes a moment to touch his hand to left of the big wooden crosses in the middle, and breathes in the feeling of Sam. 

There’s a dug-up grave under the right cross, so close to Sam that the side of Sam’s coffin pokes out into it. It’s Dean’s grave, of course; he’d picked it out himself. 

He runs his hand down the back of the cross, and something pricks him. He circles the cross he spent hours sanding smooth, and finds words etched in the back that weren’t there this morning.

“ALL HAIL SAM WINCHESTER, BOY KING”

Croats can’t write, but only Croats called Sam the Boy King. He pulls out his own knife and carefully scratches out the words, and stalks out to go look for the culprit.

He gets his gun out and he’s crouching low to the ground and this is what he’s fucking made for, saving people, hunting Croats, the last in line of a long-dead family business. His feet are silent as he stalks back towards the bonfire.

He’s halfway back when he hears a scream. He runs towards the children’s cabin, towards Lisa and Ben.

When he bursts through the door the first thing he smells is blood. Not human blood, but the acrid super-red stuff the Croats bleed. Then he sees. There are children, tied up in a row with saturated blood dripping from their mouths, and Ben, ten-year-old Ben who loves baseball and paintball, hand in his tied-up mother’s hair, smearing his slit wrist across her face.

He doesn’t even hesitate, doesn’t even realize that it’s Ben until the shot’s already been fired. Ben collapses, and Lisa screams again. He rips his knife out of its holster and cuts her bonds. One of the children screams, a high, inhuman noise, and begins to shred its bonds. He shoots it, shoves Lisa out the door, and locks it behind him.

More shrieks echo from within the cabin. And Castiel is there with a can of gasoline, and the angels are walking in a line bearing torches and water. He starts pouring the gas. The first one throws her torch into the gas, and the whole thing goes up with the little abominations inside burning alive.

Lisa starts to cry. Dean sits down next to her and watches the angels put out the fire, shooting any survivors. He doesn’t cry, doesn’t even think he can at this point.

There’s a little kid, half burnt but alive and not shrieking, and Castiel advances on him, hands outstretched like he’s approaching a dog. Dean already knows what’s going to happen, but he still flinches when Castiel leans over and cuts open one of the Croat corpses, sticking his hand in and pulling out the fresh heart. He touches the kid’s shoulder with his unbloodied hand, and offers him the heart. The kid takes a bite, holds it on his tongue. It slowly turns from candy red to rotted green. Castiel nods, says what he always does when someone’s infected.

“Do you want me, or Dean?”

If he chooses Dean, he’ll be shot and buried in the woods. If he chooses Castiel, he’ll still wind up buried in the woods, but first there’d be a mass. The kid doesn’t even look at Dean, just stares up at Castiel like he’s the second coming. “You.”

Castiel nods again. “Do you want the whole ritual, or are you too young?”

The kid gestures to his burnt leg. “Just get it over with, please.”

Castiel nods, leans in, and kisses the kid gently. Dean has to turn away as Castiel reaches for his knife.

When the kid’s throat is slit, two angels carry his corpse off towards the church. The rest remain, watching as Castiel approaches Lisa. Dean glares, and he smiles pacifyingly. “You know we have to check.”

Lisa wipes away her tears and reaches for the Croat heart. She takes a big bite, doesn’t shirk about it, and holds the wet flesh on her tongue. There’s no change. Cas smiles. “Well, you’re either clean, or a full blown Croat.”

She smiles back at him, and there’s something sharp about her face that wasn’t there before. “Seeing as I’m not shrieking and trying to rip your throat out, I think I’m clean.”

Cas shrugs. “Fine, you’re either clean, or the next Boy King.”

Dean’s too exhausted to get mad

*****  
He walks Lisa back to his cabin. She’s not shaking, but her spine’s stiff, and she walks ahead of him, gun in her steady hand. She unlocks the cabin door with her spare key, and walks in and sits down on his bed. The angels wiped the blood off her face, but her hair is matted with it. He puts a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve got blood in your hair.”

She doesn’t react. “Then cut it off.”

She pulls a knife out of her boot and offers it up to him. He takes it. He understands. He kind of wants to cut off the bits of his face where Ben’s blood splattered. He pulls her hair tight, probably too tight, but she keeps her head upright, neck muscles straining as they pull against his grip. He hacks at her hair, right there at the base of her neck, like he’s trying to sever a limb, but she holds strong and doesn’t flinch as the hairs are pulled out. “How short you want it?”

“Like yours.”

So he grabs the hair at the top of her head and hacks at it, tuft by tuft, until her hair’s short. He looks down at the tangled mess on the floor. She looks at the wall. He picks up the hair, or as much of it as he can, and throws it outside. When he comes back in, she’s still looking at the wall. Ben’s blood is on her scalp, now visible through her short dark hair.

She turns to him, finally, face sharp and gaunt and dead. “Let’s go to Mass”

*****

Dean doesn’t go inside the church. Instead, he watches Lisa take her place in the pews along with a few of the people who’d come to watch. The angels are facing the altar, wing tattoos to Dean, sitting on little plastic chairs and eating off little plastic plates with little plastic forks and knives. Dean thinks there isn’t a single damn thing about them that isn’t plastic.

As he stares in the church door, Castiel brushes by him, and is greeted with a cheer as he sweeps through the beads, arms thrown above his head in a cynical show of triumph. The angels clap. The angels scream. God is here.

Dean watches Castiel walk up to the altar and open up the tabernacle, revealing the Croat heart. Castiel takes out the heart with his bare hands and places it on a plastic plate. He takes one of the little plastic knives they stole from the Stop & Shop down the street and jams it into the center.

He carefully cuts the heart into pieces. He offers the plate to the angel to his right, and she takes a piece and places in on her tongue, not chewing or swallowing but simply letting it sit there, blood and saliva mixing in her mouth. Each girl does the same. Castiel roams the inside of the circle, stooping down and carefully checking the inside of each angel’s mouth for green flesh. He stops at the third-to-last angel, and carefully inserts two fingers into her mouth and plucks out the piece of heart. It’s green.

The angel shakes. The angel cries. Castiel puts one comforting hand on her shoulder, looking down at her with his alien eyes. “You can choose, you know. You can choose who you want. I can do it, or you can do it, or we can turn you over to Dean. But we can’t let you stay and turn and kill us all. You understand this, right love?”

The girl nods. “So, who do you want?”

She looks up, her big pretty doe eyes meeting his and bursts into tears. “You, you, always you! I’ve followed you here, I’ve eaten at your table, how could I possibly not choose you?”

Castiel smiles sadly down at her and scoops her up in his arms. He’s not God, not even an angel anymore, but he’s strong, stronger than Dean, and he carries her like a little baby, like she weighs nothing and walks straight towards the altar. On the altar sits a big black bowl. In some other life, it was probably a contemporary mixing bowl, something a rich innocent housewife somewhere might’ve owned.

Castiel sets her down and takes his knife in his hand. It’s not a pretty knife, not some ceremonial thing; it’s the same one he uses when they go out on raids. He’s still fumbling with it when she kisses him, tear tracks on her cheeks as she leans up into him. He drops the knife and cups her face, and for a moment, it looks a little bit like love. Then he lets her go and drops to his feet in front of her, grabbing his knife.

He stands up, kisses her, cuts her throat, and bends her over the altar, letting her bleed out into the big black bowl. He looks out at the crowd. “As all plants draw strength from the flesh of their fallen brethren, so too shall we. “

The angels echo back. “Amen.”

Dean walks into the church and grabs Lisa by the shoulder. She doesn’t protest. They both know what comes next, and neither of them want to be there for it.

As they leave, they hear Castiel draw the ax out from under the altar. They walk out, but Dean looks back just in time to see Castiel bring down the axe. There’s no point in cooking the head. The angels don’t eat the brain. Only Croats do that.

Dean turns away as the angel’s head rolls across the floor.

***** 

He kisses her in his cabin. She stands there, loose and uncaring, and then shoves him back into the wall so hard his head smacks against it. He grins up at her, but she doesn’t follow. She stands away, arms still outstretched, staring at them. Dean slides to the floor. She looks down at him. “You killed my son.”

Her lips slowly draw back. Louder, this time. “You killed my son.”

She crouches down between his spread legs, mouth pulled up in a snarl. “You said he may as well have been yours, and you killed him. Shot him where he stood.”

Dean holds up his hands. “You know as well as I do that whatever I shot wasn’t Ben. If you’ve gotta get mad at something, get mad at the goddamn Croats. They’re the ones that fucking killed him.”

She stands up and grabs for her gun. When she opens the door, Dean can smell the angel’s body roasting in the pit.

He sits down on the bed, and it creaks beneath his weight. He looks at his hand. He looks at his gun. He shot Ben. Outside, Lisa screams, not in terror, but in anger. He doesn’t go out and look for her.

He shot Ben. He doesn’t care. He shot Sam, too. He’ll probably shoot Cas. He doesn’t care. He sits there for a long, long time.

Someone walks by his window, taller than Lisa. He grabs his flashlight off the floor and walks out.

Quietly, he stalks after the figure, flashlight off, feet quick and silent in pursuit. The figure stops. Dean sees it’s holding a shovel. He turns his flashlight on. Cas looks up. He’s got a bag in his other hand, and he doesn’t look guilty in the slightest. Dean points his gun. “The fuck are you doing here?”

Cas grins, high on adrenaline and holiness. “Burying the sacred remains. What does it look like I’m doing, oh fearless leader?”

Dean’s lip twitches. “Practicing cannibalism.”

“I’ve told you this before; God doesn’t eat communion, he merely provides it.”

“Yet he drinks the wine”

Cas gestures vaguely with the hand that isn’t holding the shovel. “We’ve done away with the whole ‘bread and wine’ bit. The blood and body bit is a little less metaphorical now, and I don’t partake in it.”

Dean tilts his head. “Are you drunk?”

Cas laughs. “I’m always sober for services.”

Dean wants to shoot him. “If I actually believed that, I might show up more often.”

Cas simpers. “It’s sweet.”

“What?” Dean snaps.

“How much you care.”

Cas leaves to bury his body as Dean glares.

***** 

It hits him the next morning that not just Ben died. It was the kids, all the kids, an entire generation of Camp Chitaqua residents wiped out in one night. He gets up and goes outside. He sleeps fully dressed, gun strapped to his thigh. He only takes it off to bathe, and even then, Lisa’s always on guard. She’s not back yet, and he’s less worried than he should be.

Within a five minutes walk towards the church he finds her, sparring with an angel in front of the pit. It’s still smoking, and Dean can smell the burning flesh. A fist connects with the side of Lisa’s face, but she shrugs it off, keeps going forward. The angel may have trained under Castiel, but Lisa’s fighting mad, teeth bared as she bears down on her. Her fist connects. The angel falls.

Dean keeps walking. She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t even notice he’s there, and he doesn’t look back at her. Behind him, he hears another fist hit flesh. He keeps walking.

*****  
Cas is seated in the church, crisscross-applesauce in front of the altar with a belt around his left bicep. His eyes are closed, his face peaceful, and there are two angels kneeling on either side of him, the left one clutching a syringe. As Dean watches, Cas motions to the left angel without opening his eyes, and she moves to bring needlepoint to flesh. Dean starts forward. “Drop it, bitch.”

Dean stares her down, and she glances from Cas’ closed eyes to Dean’s bloodshot ones, uncertain. The church is Cas’ territory, and Dean rarely bothers to challenge his rule. Finally, she raises her arm and makes to inject Cas, only to be stopped by his gentle hand on her elbow. “Wait, let him speak his piece. God will still be listening in an hour.”

He motions for them to depart, and they do. Cas undoes the belt and pats the floor to his left. He opens his eyes.

Dean stays where he is. “You do realize we’ve got a problem on our hands, don’t you? A generational genocide, and you’re doing heroin.”

Cas chuckles. “I do heroin so I don’t have to deal with generational genocides.”

“Well you aren’t doing heroin now, so deal with it.”

Cas sighs. “I’ll stop distributing birth control.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “What for?”

Cas smiles, but there’s no joy in it, except for perhaps the joy of knowing something Dean doesn’t. “We’re all out of kids, right? So we’d better make some new ones.”

Dean glares. “Make the announcement at dinner tonight.”

Cas grins, a lazy thing, teeth still pure and white despite the grime around him. “Yes, sir”

The angels are creeping back in through the wings now, one with the needle still clutched in her hand. They’re both twitchy now, and Dean wonders if they’re sharing needles, wonders how he ever thought they weren’t.

He turns to leave as the angels reach Cas with their sinewy arms outstretched. Halfway out the door, he looks back in time to see Cas’ lips meet the right angel’s as the left angel tightens the belt around his arm. Castiel opens his eyes into the kiss and stares straight at Dean, who stands there, half-turned, transfixed. He turns to kiss the left angel as she plunges the needle into his arm.

Dean turns away.

***** 

Cas does exactly as asked. They’re gathered around the fire, eating rabbit stew, and he stands up without announcement, grin on his face. “Thanks to those Croats a few nights back, we’ve got no more kids, so we need some new ones. Ladies, gentlemen, I highly encourage you to get pregnant, not just for the good of humanity and all that, but because you don’t have to go on food raids if you do.”

He sits back down, his voice still resonating throughout the camp. Somehow, it sounds sweet coming out of Cas’ mouth, not a hint of aggression to it. Something’s missing.

Cas shuffles himself closer to Dean and slips him a list, written in his unsettling Times New Roman handwriting. He leans in too close and breathes in Dean’s ear. “You thought I would do your dirty work, didn’t you? Read the list, or nobody’s gonna do it.”

Dean’s fingers clench too tight around the list, and he stands up and lets Cas’ words fall out of his mouth. “Just to get the ball rolling, here’s a list of ladies who’re now forbidden birth control, on pain of death, just to get the pregnancy ball rolling: Mina Miyazaki, Jocelyn Embers, Riza Ramirez, Tamika Martin, Ashlee King, and Lisa Braeden.”

He sits back down. Cas smiles at him. Dean refuses to smile back. “What the hell were you thinking, putting Lisa on that list? You know Ben just died, how could you possibly think she’s ready for another child?”

“The lists are gonna come out every month, and the first ones on them are gonna be the mothers of the dead kids who are currently in a relationship. They gave birth without issues before.”

Dean grits his teeth. “Yeah, in hospitals. I know Lisa had a C-Section.”

“You’d be fine with all this if it didn’t mean that you had to either stop fucking Lisa or actually do something for yourself, wouldn’t you?.”

Dean reaches for his gun. “If you don’t stop talking I’m gonna fucking shoot you.”

Cas doesn’t even flinch. “No, you aren’t. After all, who’d you have then?”

Slowly, Dean draws his gun. He doesn’t aim it, just lets it sit there in his hand, a silent threat. “Lisa.”

Cas eyes the gun, eyes half-lidded, unfearing. “After you shot her son? I don’t think so. Plus, you know as well as I do, she’s not like us.”

“Nowadays, that’s a little more debatable.”

Cas’ eyes widen in mock surprise. “Ooh, sweetheart gone sour? That’s interesting.”

Dean slowly raises the gun, leveling with Cas’ too-blue eyes. “If you keep talking you will die.”

Cas maintains eye contact, ignoring the gun. “No, I won’t.”

“Give me one good reason why not.”

At this, Castiel finally smiles, but it’s a vicious, ugly thing. “I dragged you out of hell. I rebelled for you, I fell for you. I do believe you owe me at least the right to talk to you however I please.”

Dean says nothing, and watches Cas grin. It seems like he always has the same grin nowadays. It makes Dean want to vomit, want to beat Cas until his too-white teeth fall out, see if he can still grin like that with nothing but bloodied gums. But debt still runs in his blood, and so he sits and watches Cas grin for a long, long time.

****

He walks by the graves on the way to his cabin. Sam’s cross is still standing tall, but somebody’s pushed Dean’s over into his dug-up grave. He doesn’t bother to fix it, just wonders who it was.

*****  
Lisa’s waiting for him back at the cabin with her ass planted in the center of his bed and a glare pasted across her once-smiling face. Dean drops to his knees between her spread legs, wraps his arms around her and rests his head on her taut stomach.

She looks down at him with her once-warm brown eyes. “You aren’t fucking me this month.”

He looks up at her, and she glares back down at him. “You know why. You had your chance, a chance to take care of the one fucking thing I loved, and not only did you fail to save him, you shot him right in front of me. Don’t you dare look at me like I’m doing you wrong.”

Dean keeps looking at her, pity in his eyes. She wants to hurt him, now, and he can’t blame her. “Cas still expects you to get pregnant, you know.”

She rolls out of his arms and lies down facing the wall. “Then he can knock me up himself.”

He climbs up onto the bed after her and they lie there on top of the covers together, breathing slow and out of sync. He wraps his arms around her the way she used to do to him and she stops breathing.

He rubs small, soothing circles over her stomach until she stops holding her breath, and when she does start breathing again it’s a shaky sound. He thinks she might be crying, and he loves her, he really does. And then she opens her mouth, and shaky voiced, speaks. “I’m gonna fuck Castiel. He says he speaks for God, right? Maybe my next son‘ll be a demigod. They’re immortal, aren’t they?”

Dean just keeps up his circles, until she elbows him in the ribs, not jokingly but with real intent to hurt. He doesn’t move away, but he does stop rubbing her stomach. She breathes steadier now. “Why won’t you stop.”

It’s not a question. “Because I can’t.”

“Castiel will be twice the father you ever were.”

He sighs. “I know.”

He holds her until she stops crying. He holds her for a long time.

They sleep like that, Lisa facing the wall and Dean curled around her, back open to the outside world

***** 

When he wakes up, Lisa’s not there. He knows where she is, and it cuts like a knife, but he knows he deserves it.

*****

 

When Lisa doesn’t come back in an hour, he checks in on HQ, and Tamika’s there already, wild hair tied back as she pushes a tack into the map. It’s right over where the burnt-down kid’s cabin used to be. It’s an attack site, square in the heart of Camp territory, but it was still theirs. He smiles the way Cas smiles, no joy in it. They may have lost a generation, but they haven’t lost the camp. He hasn’t lost the camp. “Tamika?”

She goes to mass, she probably ate some of the kids that died that night, but it doesn’t matter now. She looks up, brown eyes wide. “Yes?”

“Have we found any cracks in the wall?”

She throws him a little mock salute. “No, sir, Benny inspected it himself.”

The sir is sarcastic. He pretends it wasn’t. “Well I want to see for myself, just to be sure.”

“Do you want an escort, sir?”

He pats the gun strapped to his thigh. “I’ve already got one.”

She gestures to the ak-47 strapped to her back .“Mine’s bigger.”

He smiles, soft and easy and completely fake. They used to fuck, he thinks, before she became an angel. She was all spitfire in bed, nails and teeth and long lean muscle, a harshness to her that people only seemed to have once they’d looked death in the eye. No matter how harsh she was, she still knew how to take an order without being given one. Silently, she takes the gun from where it hangs in the small of her back and hands it to him. He looks at her. “You’ve still got a gun, right?”

She turns around and hikes her shirt up with a little shimmy, revealing a handgun tucked into the back of her jeans, as well as the bottoms of her ‘wings.’ Her ass is fantastic, her jeans slung low on her hips, but all he can think about is how Sam used to keep his gun tucked into his boxers, even when he slept.

She looks over her shoulder, a flirtatious smile on her face, but there’s no real intent behind it. Castiel’s angels don’t fuck people who aren’t Castiel or each other. He slings the gun over his shoulder, and she looks at him, smile turning devious. “Then again, I’m not supposed to have protection, right?”

He groans. “That was terrible.”

She looks at him, amiable expectancy on her face. “No other comments?”

He slings the gun over his shoulder. “You know why I did it.”

It’s her turn to groan. “For the survival of humanity, I know, I know. Only problem is, I don’t give a shit.”

He blinks. “What do you mean by that?”

She shrugs. “Why should I give a shit about the good of humanity? Once I die, I’m dead. Why should I care what happens to whoever comes after?”

“Basic human decency?”

Another shrug. “Once again, I don’t give a shit.”

He leans in, genuinely curious. “Why become an angel then, if you’re so self-centered?”

“Simple. I wanna live a damn good life, full of whatever the fuck I want, and when I die, I wanna go to heaven. Castiel can give me all that.”

His jaw clenches. “He wrote that list, you know.”

“So I don’t fuck anyone for a few weeks. Small price to pay.”

“He expects you to try, you know.”

She bats her eyelashes at him. “Dying in childbirth isn’t exactly my idea of a damn good life. Plus, even if I did survive, I’d be way too stretched out to enjoy sex properly.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “You know that’s a myth, right?”

“Not worth the risk.”

He leans in even closer. “Anyway, didn’t you have a kid before?”

“Yeah, via C-section.”

He gives up. “So you really don’t give a shit if we all die out?”

“Yeah, no.”

He can’t help but chuckle. “Wow. Bitch.”

“Call me that again and I’m taking my gun back.”

She’s smiling though, and her teeth are yellow against her dark skin. He smiles back, turns around, and goes out to the wall.

*****  
It’s about a two-mile walk to the wall, and he walks that distance in silence, accompanied only by his guns and the sound of his footfalls. There’s a path, well worn by the guards, and Dean follows it, stepping inside Benny’s larger footprints, just to keep himself amused.

The gun’s heavy on his back. He can feel where the strap is digging into his shoulder, and he knows he’ll have a bruise there tomorrow. He’s already got a permanent one, two strips of black and blue wrapped around his right thigh, where he keeps his gun secured too tight. Better to let it bruise than to have it fall off in the middle of the action. Still, he switches the strap from one shoulder to the other. Now he’ll have two bruises for Lisa to coo over.

He remembers, quickly, that Lisa doesn’t do that anymore.

He shifts the strap back over its indent and walks a little faster.

***** 

By the time he arrives at the wall, it’s midday and the sun is beating down. He wonders what month it is. Probably August. He takes his shirt off and tucks it into the back of his pants. Sure enough, there’s a bruise on his shoulder. The gun, sweat-lubricated, swings loose against his back. The other gun pinches at his thigh. He doesn’t even notice. He’s used to it.

The wall looms ahead of him, and he looks up, squinting into the sun. It’s about twelve feet tall and made of concrete, with barbed wire at the top, and no gate. There hasn’t been a Croat smart enough to climb it, or, for that matter, a smart Croat, since Sam. It encloses maybe five square miles of camp ground, and there are always four people on patrol, just in case there’s another Sam.

He shakes the fence, and it hardly moves. There’s a herd of Croats wandering nearby, and the jingling attracts them. They lurch towards the wall. One of them, the big one, is missing an arm. He must be strong, or the other Croats would’ve eaten him for his weakness.

They grapple at the fence for a few moments. Dean grabs his gun, takes aim, and fires at the one-armed one in the head. The others ignore it as it falls, hyper-saturated blood splattering their distorted faces. He mows down the second one, then the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. He shoots the seventh one, too. That one was one of the campers, lost on a food raid. The eighth’s a child, a little girl, with one eye missing. He shoots it. He shot Ben; why should he give a damn about who a Croat used to be?

He keeps shooting, and the noise keeps attracting more Croats. He keeps shooting until the ak-47 ‘s out of ammo. He draws his handgun from his thigh holster. He shoots all but one before that runs out of ammo as well. He grabs a stick, sits down on the ground, and starts sharpening it with his knife, making the occasional noise to keep it interested.

When the stake’s finished, he stands up and approaches the fence. Once he’s in range, the Croat’s arm shoots out, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him in close. It lunges forward, mouth open, breath rank, and Dean drives the stake up into its brain. It dies with a scream, splattering Dean with blood, but he keeps his mouth shut and nothing gets in. He feels better after that.

He pats the wall again. He trusts Benny. There are no cracks in the wall, which means there’s a Croat like Sam somewhere out there.

He turns around and heads back towards the camp, the Croat’s blood still splattered on his face and chest.

***** 

He heads straight for the church. Once it’s in his sight, he starts up at a run, ignoring the campers milling about. He slams through the door, pushing the bead curtain aside, and freezes.

The church is and dead silent but for the sound of heavy breathing and the slap of skin on skin. It’s near empty, too, and it takes him a minute before he spots them, the only source of motion in the too-still room.

Cas has her bent over one of the pews, one hand on her hip and the other curled loosely around her neck as he fucks her hard. Dean watches as his hand tightens and Lisa groans as her airflow is cut off. His fingers unclench and Lisa opens her mouth, gasping for air while he fucks her steadily through it. As soon as she’s breathing right, she looks back at him. “Again.”

His fingers curl around her tanned throat, tighter this time, and Dean finally unfreezes. He turns and runs, not even caring if they notice him

*****

He contemplates jerking off, pressed up to the back of his cabin, facing the woods. He’s not quite sure why. He’s fucked Lisa a hundred, no, a thousand times, seen her naked and writhing in the throes of orgasm. He’s seen porn too, used to watch it every day before the world ended, and it was all wilder than this, kinkier, with handcuffs and toys and disproportionate body parts. He was never quite as turned on as he is now.

He slides down the side of the cabin until his ass hits the grass. He doesn’t jerk off, not when he can’t be sure what he’s jerking off to.

*****

He sits there for god knows how many hours, back to the cabin, accompanied only by his breathing and his thoughts, until he hears the door click open. He stands up then, and slips off into the woods, circling around the cabin with a hand on his gun. He peers into the window, just in time to see Lisa flopped down on the bed, eyes closed, clothes off. There’s a handprint bruise wrapped around her neck, lovingly accessorized with a smattering of hickies. She rolls over, giving him a good view of the handprint bruise on her ass. That one’s still red, yet to purple over, and he thinks to the handprint on his own shoulder, red and raised and possessive.

The sight does absolutely nothing for him. He’s never been able to get into that, hurting another person, not since hell. He’ll try anything once; she wants to call him daddy or handcuff him to the bed, he doesn’t give a shit, sex is sex, but the second he’s asked to hurt her he’s outta there. He’ll do it, of course, but he can’t get off on it, has to pretend he’s somewhere else.

He wonders if this is what Lisa needs now, since Ben. He hopes not. He ducks back down and crawls past the windows until he arrives at the path.

*****

When he arrives at the church Castiel is waiting for him. He’s seated behind the altar on a little plastic chair, crisscross-applesauce with both arms outstretched. There are hickies on his neck. He doesn’t open his eyes, but he does speak. “Hello, Dean. Come to kill me?”

Dean wishes he had. “Come to talk.”

“About what?”

“We’ve got a smart Croat on the loose.”

“I was under the impression that was obvious.”

Dean strides up to the altar. “And you never felt the need to, oh, I don’t know, say something?”

“Not particularly.”

“And why the hell not?”

Cas stands up, eyes still closed. He’s got pants on, but not a shirt, and there are scratch marks on his hips. “Because what the hell would you do if I told you? Put the whole camp on red alert? Send it even further into hiding, like the fucking mole it is? If it’s anything like Sam, we can’t detect it by any conventional means. You know as well as I do that we’ve gotta wait for it to make the first move.”

“I’d at least have liked to know. Might’ve made me grip my gun a little tighter.”

“That’s not humanly possible.”

“You should’ve told me”

Cas finally opens his eyes. “No, I shouldn’t have.”

Dean walks forward. “Stop being such an insubordinate bitch.”

“I’m not your subordinate. Or your bitch.”

“Well that’s not how it looks from here.”

Cas squints. “What do you mean by that?”

Dean gestures towards their surroundings. “I say fall, you say ‘how far.’ Sounds pretty subordinate to me, bitch.”

Castiel leans over the altar and fists his hands in Dean’s shirt, dragging him forward until their faces are mere inches apart. He snarls. “Dean, Dean, darling Dean. Are you truly so stupid that you can’t tell the difference between affection and servitude?”

Dean looks back, trying his best to seem unfazed. “Are you so stupid you can’t tell the difference between affection and beating the shit out of someone because he’s not doing what you want?”

“It worked. You listened.”

“And look where that got us.”

Castiel releases his shirt, and Dean slides back to the other side of the altar. They both circle around until the altar’s no longer between them. Castiel is smaller than Dean, but he’s looming anyways, and Dean thinks that this is why angels always had to introduce themselves with ‘be not afraid.’ Castiel steps forward. “I saved your miserable life, and I have yet to receive a word of thanks.”

Dean steps back. “I suppose you’re following me around hoping I’ll ‘thank’ you properly.”

Castiel smiles. “I seem to recall you saying something rather similar, right before I beat you.”

“Is that a threat? You gonna beat me ‘cause I speak the truth?”

“No; I’m just commenting on a coping mechanism of yours. You seem to like making accusations when you get nervous.”

“If we’re going back to the day you beat me, you’ll recall all the ‘accusations’ were true. Bobby wasn’t my real dad, Sam ended the world, and you, you followed me all the way down from heaven ‘cause your dick told you to.”

Cas glares. “I do hate it when you reduce my discovery of free will down to ‘my dick told me to.’”

Dean smirks. “You’re avoiding the question. Do you, or do you not, want to fuck me?”

“Does it really matter? Look around; I’m the only one of my kind who stayed while you and the rest of humanity rot. Hell, I’m rotting with you. I have done all this and more for you, and your biggest concern is whether or not I want to fuck you? You’re even stupider than you look. How did the phrase go again? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I’d expect that’d be exceptionally applicable to someone who’s never owned a horse before.”

Dean doesn’t move. Castiel’s stronger than him, but so was Sam, and he’d beaten Sam before. Then again, Sam didn’t fight back, and Castiel’s got a billion years of experience on his side.

He never throws the punch. Instead, he turns around. “There’s gotta be a food raid in the next three days or we’ll be down to one meal a day.”

Cas nods. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Dean walks out, and Cas yells behind him. “I hope you enjoyed the show!”

Dean doesn’t turn around.

*****

Lisa’s still naked when he gets back. The bruise on her ass is purpling. In a few days it’ll be yellow and mottled, but for now it’s just high-contrast darkness against her already tanned skin. She looks over her shoulder at him, eyes heavy-lidded. “You’ll never guess what he called me in bed.”

Dean glares. He’s not in the mood to play games, especially not with this new, twisted Lisa. Just for a moment, he doesn’t care how bad she’s hurting. “Daddy’s little slut.”

Her kiss-swollen lips split into a wicked smile. “That’s a synonym, but no cigar.”

Dean shrugs and turns away. “Well, I’m done playing twenty questions here, and you’re on dinner duty, so if you wanna fuck off for a while, that’d be fantastic”

“Dean.”

He turns around. “That’d be my name.”

She smiles softly. It looks wrong on her hollowed-out face. “That’s what he called me.”

Dean’s jaw clenches. “Fucking great. Any other grand revelations you wanna spring on me?”

“He wants to fuck you.” Her mouth curves around the words, letting them drip off her tongue like poison honey.

Dean tries his best to remain nonchalant. “No shit, Sherlock.”

“Then why hasn’t he?”

Dean shrugs. “I’m pretty sure by the time he realized what his dick was for, he was too weak to make me.”

“That’s not what I’m asking”

He edges closer to the bed unconsciously. “Well than you’re gonna have to be a bit more specific, sweetheart.”

Once he’s close enough, she grabs him by the sleeve. A month ago, it would’ve been an endearing gesture, but now, there’s an almost supernatural force behind the grip. She sighs. “I’m asking why Mister ‘anything that asks’ hasn’t spread his desperate little legs by now.”

“I’m not a cheater.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Well I am. You’re holding yourself to a higher standard than me, per usual.”

“I’ve had maybe an hour since you got done fucking him.”

Lisa grins joylessly. She hasn’t grinned joyfully since Ben, so that’s nothing new. “You saying you’ll fuck him?”

“No, I’m saying your logic’s faulty.”

“You’re avoiding the question. Would you, or would you not, fuck Castiel, former angel of the Lord.”

He scoffs. “You make it sound like I haven’t fucked fallen angels before.”

She raises a finger. “Avoiding the question.”

Dean glares, silent. Lisa’s grin widens. Her teeth look too sharp. “And don’t you talk like there haven’t been guys before.”

He doesn’t bother to question how she knows this. Lisa rolls over. There’s a bite mark around her left nipple. “He liked my haircut, you know. Even though it’s too short to pull. I think it reminds him of you. I think he’s in love with you.”

“Go cook the fucking dinner, Lisa.”

Her face shifts from amused to vicious. “You murdered my son, and he loves you. He fell for you. He damned this entire earth so that you’d live. He’s done all this for you, and you couldn’t keep my son alive.”

“Get out of the cabin, Lisa.”

Lisa gets up off the bed and starts pulling on her clothes. Her bra goes on first. “Imagine the father he’ll make, if he loves my son.”

Then the panties. “He’d move mountains for him.”

Then her tattered yoga pants. “Dote on his every whim”

Then her ‘imagine whirled peas’ T-shirt. “He’d love him the way he loves you.”

She straps on her gun. “How dare you ever say you loved Ben. How dare you use the same words Castiel uses.”

She strides out of the cabin, glancing over her shoulder. “I don’t understand why you haven’t fucked him by now. He’s the best you’ll ever get.”

“He’s a druggie who thinks he’s God.”

“He’s the best you’ll ever get.”

*****  
They eat the last of the deer that night, in the form of a soup. There’s a garden full of hardy vegetables, and some of the onions from that garden are in the soup. Dean can always tell when Benny cooked something, because he always makes use of the garden. He wonders if Lisa fucked Benny too. He doubts it; if she had, she’d have told him. He eats his soup while it’s too hot and burns his tongue. He stands up. Everybody looks at him. “I’ll be leading the food raid tomorrow. With me is gonna be Lisa, Tamika, Joey, Alana, Benny, Tyrone, and Paula. Anybody else wanna volunteer?”

He looks around, not really expecting anybody to raise their hand. Cas stands up. “I volunteer.”

Dean wants to scream. He tends to want that a lot, nowadays. He doesn’t. “If that’s all?”

Nobody else stands up. Dean sits down and stares at Cas through the bonfire.

An angel pulls a bottle of pills out of her pocket and downs one dry. She offers the bottle to Cas. He looks Dean in the eye, takes the proffered bottle, tips it up in a mocking toast, and downs it like a shot. Dean watches. Cas sighs, lets his head loll onto the angel’s shoulder. He sits there, watching, for a long time.

The angel leaves, and Cas flops back down on the grass. Dean stands up and grabs for the bucket next to the fire. He dumps it on the fire until only the embers are still glowing.

He can’t see Cas’ face anymore, but he knows he’s still smiling. He strides over to where he can make out Cas’ prone form. “What the fuck are you thinking.”

Cas doesn’t look at him. “I’m thinking that if you die out there, I’d better at least be there to see it.”

“You’re second in command. We can’t just send both Camp leaders out into zombie territory, that’s suicide!”

“I don’t care about what happens to the rest of the camp, just you.”

Dean sits down there, silent, for a moment. “You want to fuck me.”

From his place on the ground, Cas shrugs. “Yes, and?”

“Why haven’t you?”

Cas doesn’t answer. Dean continues. “I mean, you’ve had a thousand opportunities. You were stronger, faster, you could’ve done anything and I couldn’t have stopped you. Hell, you’re still probably stronger; you’ve still got some angel in you.”

“It’s not fucking if you’re fighting back.”

Dean cocks his head. It’s a challenge. “Who says I’d fight?”

Cas sighs again, as if he were trying to explain Shakespeare to a toddler. “Sex requires two people, not one person and one limp body.”

Dean doesn’t look at him. “Well that’s all you’re gonna fucking get.”

“No, it’s not.”

He says it so matter-of-factly that Dean thinks, just for a second, that he’s an angel again, cold and hard and practical. He looks over at Cas, who’s lying on the dirt in a ratty Henley, talking about his libido. “Yes, it is. You want power, you’ve gotta take it.”

“Is everything I do about power to you?”

“You literally started a cult to make up for the fact that you got hit with some kryptonite.”

Cas groans. “That’s one thing. Not everything.”

“Well it’s a damn good character indicator.”

Cas sits up. “So say this is about power; am I forcing people to join my cult, or are they coming to me willingly?”

Dean doesn’t answer, and Cas continues. “It’s so much better to be loved than feared. Machiavelli was an idiot.”

Dean stares at him, befuddled. “What the fuck are you even saying.”

Castiel stares right back, and his eyes are smiling and alien. “What I’m saying is when you come to me, and you will, you’d better do it on your knees.”

“I don’t want you. I never will. And fuck you for thinking you could change my mind.”

“If I do recall, you were the one who came here and tried to convince me to ‘take what I want.’”

“You want power over me. I didn’t offer you that.”

Dean swallows. It’s audible. Castiel smiles at the sound. He used to relish making Dean calm. Now, he wants him on his toes. “No, I want you to love me.”

“Same fucking difference to you.”

“Do you really think so little of me?”

Dean makes as if to stand. “You’re the reason we’re here, aren’t you? Let’s review. You told me to say no to Michael. You let Sam say yes to Lucifer. You made me sit back and watch them duke it out in my brother’s body, and, finally, when the world was in shambles and both Michael and Lucifer were dead, you handed me a gun and told me to kill what was left of my brother. All because of a couple of damn broken pedestals. So yes, I do think that little of you.”

Cas lies back down, resigned. “So you’d damn me for saving your life.”

“At the price of Sam’s? Hell yeah I would.”

“You’d be a monster without me.”

Dean sneers. “Well then what do you call what I am now? I shot Ben, remember? I think that was pretty monstrous of me.”

“I loved you when you were in hell, carving out people’s insides. Ben is nothing.”

Dean snarls. “Don’t you ever, ever say Ben was nothing.”

“Is. I said Ben is nothing.”

“Ben was my son.”

“He was yours neither biologically nor emotionally.”

“The hell do you mean by that?”

“Well, the first part at least should be obvious. And as for the second part, you’re a big boy, you can figure it out.”

Dean pauses. “You know, I don’t think you fully comprehend love.”

Cas grins. “Ah, aiming below the belt now, are we? I see I’ve hit a sore spot.”

Dean continues, undaunted. “Because if you loved me in hell, you loved me wrong. You don’t love something because it’s begging you for salvation. That’s just a power trip.”

“You fought me the whole way up.”

“Still a power trip, remaking me no matter what I wanted. How is that any different than what I told you to do earlier?”

“Are you trying to tell me, that in your heart of hearts, you didn’t want to be saved?”

“You know, maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was nice, not staring down the barrel of a gun all the time, waiting for the end. Maybe it was nice for it to just be over.”

“You see, talk like that’s gonna get you hit.”

Dean grins, wild-eyed and rabid. “Oh, there we are, there we go! That’s the truth of it, ain’t it? You wish you could still take a swing at me and come out of it alive. You’re worse than my father.”

“I am a thousand times the man your father ever was.”

“I bet you hit a thousand times as hard.”

“Shouldn’t you know?”

Finally, Dean stands up. “Oh, that was just a disciplinary spanking, wasn’t it? I’ve seen you in action. You could beat me to death and bring me back, if you had your powers, couldn’t you. Hell, you could send me back to, well, hell. I think you threatened that, once upon a time, didn’t you? My salvation was conditional. You are not my benefactor.”

Cas remains lying on the ground. “Well I’m here now, aren’t I? Is anyone else? I’m all you’ve got, take it or leave it.”

“I think I’ll leave it. I’ve already sold my soul once, and that’s an experience I don’t plan to repeat.”

He stands up and turns around. It’s pitch black, and he can no longer see Cas’ face. He walks off towards his cabin, branches cracking under his feet. Cas yells after him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dean.”

He can hear the smile in Cas’ voice. He doesn’t respond, but he does pause.

*****

When he gets back to his cabin, the windows have all been smashed, and Lisa is standing outside. He runs up to her and puts his hand on her shoulder. “Lisa, what happened?”

She turns around, and there are tear tracks on her face. He wants to wipe them away, but the scowl on her face tells him it wouldn't be welcome. “I don’t know, I don’t fucking know. Why don’t you tell me?”

Dean hesitates. “What’re you talking about?”

Lisa’s scowl intensifies, the little crease between her eyebrows that Dean used to love deepening. “Oh, I think you know. Castiel told me all about it.”

Dean pauses for a moment, rummaging through his memory, trying to make sense of the last few days. “You mean the mole.”

“Yes, I mean the worst goddamn thing that could happen to this camp. I mean a repeat of Sam, happening under your watch, under your fucking nose, yet again. And the worst part is, you didn’t think to tell me, so that maybe, just maybe, I could protect myself, or at least be on the lookout for anyone who’s been acting differently, or something!”

Dean wipes a hand over his face. “Lisa I’m…”

“Sorry won’t cut it. You’re supposed to protect this camp, but all you’ve brought us is ruin. This is my home, too, and now look what’s happened to it because of you. You can’t keep anybody safe.”

She turns on her heel and walks into their ruined home. He follows.

*****  
She wakes him up by nudging him with her foot. He’s surprised she doesn’t kick him. He’s up and at breakfast and Tamika, Joey, Alana, Benny, Tyrone, Paula and Cas are all there with bowls of dry cereal in their hands.

Tamika snickers. He must look like shit, and his neck is stiff. He wonders if everybody can tell he slept on the floor. He wonders if everybody can tell Lisa fucked Cas. He takes his bowl of cereal from where it’s been placed by the breakfast crew and starts to eat it. He eats with his hands. They don’t use silverware unless it’s necessary, or a mass.

Cas collects the bowls. He’s smiling. Dean slams his bowl down a little extra hard on top of the pile, and their hands brush. Cas’ smile widens. Dean jerks away.

*****

They walk to the wall in two lines, Cas leading one and Dean leading the other, Lisa and Tamika bring up the rear. Dean gets the gloves first, standing on Cas’ shoulders and grabbing the top of the wall, hauling himself up. The others follow suit, standing on Cas and grabbing Dean’s hands. Lisa goes second to last, before Cas. She refuses to take his hands when offered, instead grabbing the gloves and pulling herself up. She couldn’t do that, before Ben. He wonders if the loss has made her stronger. Tamika snickers, and Dean glares.

Castiel goes last. He backs up, and then takes a flying leap at the wall. He still jumps higher than normal humans. He grabs the edge with his bare hands and hauls himself up and over in one smooth swing. Everybody but Dean claps.

*****

They split into two groups, one to run to the grocery store a mile down the road and one to creep off into the woods with guns and kill whatever animals they find. Cas heads the former, and Dean heads the latter. Cas chooses the groups. He puts Lisa under Dean’s command; same with Tamika. They both glare at Dean as though it’s somehow his fault as Cas wanders off. Dean scans the group. “Everybody got a gun?”

Everybody nods at him. He nods back. “Good. You know what to do.”

They split off into twos, except Dean, who goes alone. Lisa and Tamika go together. He follows them.

*****

Lisa and Tamika don’t talk much. He doesn’t know why this surprises him so much, but it does. Instead, they walk low to the ground, guns drawn. There are lots of rabbits in this area, so even if they don’t find any deer, that’s ok.

The first thing to cross their path is a rabbit, munching on a grass patch. Tamika shoots it, and Lisa pulls a burlap sack from around her waist and drops the corpse in it.

They stumble across a dog next. It’s still got a collar on it, though it clearly hasn’t had a grooming in a long time. Lisa crouches down and makes cooing noises at it. As it runs over, tail wagging, Tamika draws her gun. They put that corpse in the burlap sack too.

It occurs to Dean that if he keeps up like this he’ll have to show up empty handed. He leaves them then, by maybe a couple hundred feet, until he stumbles across a rabbit. This one tries to run when he shoots it and when he goes to pick it up it’s still alive. Not wanting to waste bullets, he drops it in his own sack still kicking. It’ll bleed out anyway.

There’s a scream.

He runs off in the direction of Tamika and Lisa, crashing through brush, rabbit totally forgotten.

Tamika’s down and bleeding and probably bitten, and Lisa’s standing in front of her. There’re Croat corpses littered everywhere, taken down by Tamika’s ak-47, but she’s on the ground and so is the ak-47. They haven’t gone after Lisa yet.

Dean fires into the group of Croats, takes out 6 of them with clean headshots. Lisa looks at him, eyes wide, and then breaks into a smile. He grabs one of his magazines from his pocket and whips it over the heads of the Croats. Lisa catches it and jams in in her gun in one smooth motion. Two Croats lunge at her, and she takes them both out while Dean continues to pick off the herd from the back. A couple of them, the smarter ones, turn around and come at him, but the second they turn their heads there’s a bullet between their eyes.

Together, they pick off the herd, and, when the last Croat falls, Lisa picks up her bag and the ak-47 and nods to him. He joins her, and they crouch down to inspect Tamika. She’s out cold, and there’s a massive bite mark on her shoulder and Croat blood smeared around her mouth. Lisa turns to him. “Think we can get her over the wall? She was one of Castiel’s.”

“She’ll have turned by then.”

“True. You got any bullets left?”

“Nope. You?”

“Me neither.”

She takes the ak-47 and brings it down on Tamika’s head until brains show. Dean doesn’t look away. Once she’s done, he asks. “Should we say a prayer? I know she believed in that sort of stuff.”

“We’ll have Castiel do it, since neither of us is an angel.”

“So you aren’t one of Cas’ now?”

She smiles at him for the first time in weeks. “Nope.”

He slings Tamika’s body over his shoulder and heads back to the meeting place. Lisa follows.

Cas and his group show up about five minutes after them, none the worse for wear, half of them laden down with sacks of food and the other half with their guns out. Half of Tamika’s brain has fallen out of her skull, and Dean and Lisa are standing in a puddle of blood. Dean drops the body. “Hey, Cas, think you could say a little prayer for her or something? I know she was one of yours.”

Castiel drops to kneel in front of the body and mutters a few words. He reaches over and shoves what’s left of her brain back into her skull. He stands up. “Alright guys, lets go.”

They don’t walk back in line formation. Dean and Lisa bring up the rear. They’re silent, but it’s one of their old silences, like before Ben died.

***** 

They get back to their ruined cabin after putting away the food, their boots crushing the glass shards on the floor, and Lisa slams him against the wall and kisses him for the first time in weeks. He kisses her back, tries to wrap his arms around her, but she pins his wrists to the wall, and she’s strong, so much stronger than he remembered. He retaliates, biting at her lip a little too hard, swallowing down the metallic taste of blood. She unpins him and he backs her up, pushes her down on the bed. She wraps her legs around his hips and flips him over until she’s straddling his hips and sits up, looking down at him with half-lidded eyes. Dean’s heart stops.

There’s a spot of blood on her chin from her lip, and its bright fucking red, Croat red. Lisa looks down at him, taking in his shocked expression. “What is it, sweetie?”

Dean smiles. “Nothing, it’s just…I missed you.”

She smiles back at him, and leans down to kiss him again. As she presses kisses to his throat, he trails his hand down her body and to his thigh where his gun’s strapped. He rips the gun out of its holster and bucks her off, slamming her down on the bed with the gun pointed at her head. She looks up at him, brown eyes wide in horror. “…Dean? Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

He snarls. “Don’t give me that shit!”

He leans down and wipes the blood off of her chin and shows it to her. All at once, everything that made her face Lisa-like melts away, replaced with wild eyes and a snarl to match his own. He grabs her by the throat. “Who the hell are you and when did you take over Lisa?”

She blinks up at him, eyes wide. “I am Lisa.”

He squeezes harder “Shut the hell up, Croat.”

Her whole face shifts, and it’s the cruel sharp Lisa of the past few weeks pinned under him. She smiles up at him, and her teeth are too sharp. “Lisa died with her son in a cabin a few weeks back.”

He squeezes down, but her face doesn’t change. Croats don’t need to breathe. “Shut the fuck up!”

She smiles.“You asked.”

He pauses, withdraws his hand, and composes himself. He’s dead again, the hellhounds are tearing into him again, he’s killing Sam again, Ben’s a Croat and he needs to be put down and he can’t feel anymore he can’t feel a damn thing.

When he finally speaks again, his voice is smooth and cold. “How many of you are there?”

She bares her teeth. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

He releases her throat and pulls a knife out of his boot, keeping his gun trained on her. “Talk, or I cut your tongue out.”

She shrugs underneath him. “You’re gonna kill me anyways.”

“I can make it hurt a lot less though.”

“Fine. There’s just me.”

He grins the same way he did under Alistair, dark eyed and sharp toothed. “Perfect. Now tell me why you’re here.”

Her grin matches his tooth for tooth. “To infect you, of course. Fortunately, you did that for me.”

His hands shake around the gun. “The hell do you mean by that?”

“You swallowed my blood just now, remember?”

He clenches his teeth. “Why didn’t you just do it while I was sleeping? Why carry on like you’re Lisa for weeks?”

The croat actually makes to sit up, bringing her head closer to Dean’s gun. He cracks her across the face with it, and she laughs, spitting blood in his face. “You killed Sam Winchester. He was a God to us, and you shot him dead. You deserved to suffer.”

He pulls the trigger, but his hands are shaking so bad that he only grazes the side of her face. He puts the gun right up against her forehead and pulls the trigger. Blood splatters out on to his face. There’s brain on the blanket.

He’s got maybe 20 minutes until he turns.

He gets up and goes to church.

***** 

Castiel’s holding mass in Tamika’s honor when Dean barges in. All the angels turn and look at him, bits of smoked human hanging from their mouths. Some of them even stand up, their little plastic chairs falling to the floor. He marches up to the alter. “Lisa was the Croat.”

Cas blinks. “Ok. Is she dead?”

“Yeah, I shot her right in the brain.”

“Did you interrogate her first?”

Dean nods. “Yeah, she was the only one.”

Cas nods back. “Good, good.”

“Bad news, though.”

His hands are shaking and he’s sure Cas notices but he doesn’t give a damn, really, because what’s he got left to gain by hiding weakness anymore?

Cas’ hands are shaking too, and Dean stops to think that he really is human now. “What is it?”

Dean exhales shakily. “Before she went, I…swallowed some of her blood.”

A muscle in Cas’ jaw jumps. “Alright.”

Dean smiles, and there’s real warmth there, the kind he hasn’t felt since he was reassuring Sam before the hellhounds came. “Aren’t you going to offer me the choice?”

Cas stammers. “I…I didn’t think you’d want…”

“I do.”

Something changes in Castiel’s face and he’s an angel again. “Very well. You can choose. Either I can kill you, and you’ll have a shot at the afterlife, or you can shoot yourself and I’ll bury you next to your brother.”

“You can still bury me next to my brother, you know. You guys don’t eat the brains or bones.”

“I take it you’ve made your choice, then.”

Dean nods, staring adamantly at the ground. “I’d really prefer not to die alone.”

Cas moves forward first, gently cupping Dean’s face with one of his hands. Dean shudders under the touch, leaning into his hand. He can’t think of the last time someone touched him like this. There’s no intent behind it, no rush towards sex, just Cas’s too-cold hand up against Dean’s unshaven cheek. Dean looks up, and Cas looks like he’s falling apart, bit by bit. “You won’t. Die alone that is.”

Dean doesn’t comment on it, just brings his hand up to touch Cas’s. He already knew, he thinks, that if he was going to go, Cas was going to follow. Cas leans forward, hesitating. “May I…”

Dean nods. Cas’s lips are chapped when they meet his, and cold, and his stubble scratches Dean’s cheek. He reaches up to cup Cas’s face, and his fingers meet the wetness of tears. He wants to wipe them away, but it’s his fault they’re there, and something tells him that trying to comfort Cas will only make it worse. Cas makes a pathetic, choked sound against Dean’s mouth and reaches for his knife.

**Author's Note:**

> this was posted almost a year ago as my DCBB, but I decided it could use a lot of improvement, and so here we are. extra thanks goes out to my beta reader, perlukafari!


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